Category Archives: Dublin to Nepal

Dublin to Nepal, Georgia, On Tour

Day 76: Acharistskale to Leghva

After a great nights sleep in warm beds as a storm blew outside we woke up feeling well refreshed. We came down in the morning to something bad: news that the pass we hoped to cross today had been hit by a big dump of snow during the storm last night and was now closed. But also something good: Lilyanna was baking fresh bread in the stove and served us up a great breakfast of tea, fresh bread and meat dumplings. After a great feed like that we were well ready to head off.

As we were packing up Lilyanna had been on the phone to her friend who, presumably, spoke English as she came out to us with a few sentences, first ” Welcome”. Then “I love riverdance.” And finally “tell your mother to come here”. So mum, you are invited to visit Nodzari and Lilyanna in Georgia. Their house is very warm and Lilyanna is a great cook.

 

to get an idea of how much rain had fallen, this was the river when we passed it two days ago…

 
 

…and today, as we passed it on the way back to Batumi from Nodzari’s

 
We waved goodbye to the two of them and set off in the late morning. Arriving back in Batumi for the third time we followed the coast road out of the city. The road followed the train tracks for a while by the flat seaside before turning up into the hills for a some time. Back to the coast and through the town of Kobuleti where we picked up lunch from a small bakery. Took the inland road out of town, passed a hitchhiker waiting for a lift and after asking some road workers for directions followed the route towards Ozurgeti.

 

rough seas back in Batumi

  
We didn’t make it to Ozurgeti before the end of the day. We’re still getting used to the days getting shorter and we found ourselves in more hilly terrain as the sun was starting to set with few good camping spots. Eventually found one, an old overgrown dirt road that led to nowhere overlooking a small valley that provided just enough flat ground to camp on.

 

nice autumnal riding on the road to Ozurgeti

 
As we were setting up the tarp an inquisitive kid who lived nearby approached on his bike. He watched my bike as Finn tried to entertain him by showing him the map, so,e of our photos and pieces of gear. In the end we found out his name was Kiga and he had a great time helping us out the tarp up. He was a smart kid, picked up on how to tie the knot we use to attach the lines to the pegs after one show and then he wanted to make sure it was set up perfectly on all sides. After he sat with us for a while until some of his friends came over and called him back for dinner.

 

where we camped

 
It had gotten dark by now so we settled back under the tarp to eat ourselves until, maybe 20 minutes later a whole crew of kids and teenagers came over to us for a chat. One of the older guys invited us back to his place and if we hadn’t got everything set up already we would have come with him, but trying to express this to him through gestures and simple English was difficult to say the least. He ended up calling a friend of his who spoke English to communicate.

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with the welcoming party at Leghva. not pictured: Tengo (the guy who invited us back to his house). Kiga in the middle with the blue jumper


After a while they left, we figured they got bored of us after all the easy to convey information about ourselves had been given out, but soon the older guy who had invited us (his name was Tengo and was 20) his younger friend and Kiga returned. Tengo had in his hand a plastic bottle of a sort of pale, yellow liquid that was some of his homemade wine. Chatted for a while, Tengo’s friend had a smattering of English and translated while Kiga listened. When the bottle was finished and the temperature dropped they waved us goodbye and went back home and we retired to our Bivvys.

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Dublin to Nepal, Georgia

Acharistskale

The next morning we managed to have breakfast and pack everything up during a lull in the rain. Just as we were loading up the bikes though, the raindrops started to fall and we soon found ourselves nicely drenched. This didn’t dampen our sprits though, we were both very excited to get going again on our first full day of touring back.
What did dampen our spirits was the flat tyre Finn discovered after wheeling his bike away from camp. There was definitely something caught in his tyre that kept puncturing the tubes, but it was too wet and cold this morning to find it. After almost an hour of trying we eventually had to give up.

 

trying to find the puncture in a convenient puddle

 
We weren’t that far from Batumi, a bit over an hours cycle from where we were. We found a bus shelter in the small town where Finn could wait and I left my bags with him and went back to Batumi to find a new tyre. The ride back was much quicker, going downhill with a tailwind unloaded. It was really wet, but new winter gear was holding up well in the adverse conditions. Getting into town it was a fast turnaround after I found the only bike shop in Batumi (located on the corner of Pushkin St. And 26 May St. for anyone wondering). It’s a pretty basic affair, more a whole in the wall repair shop but it did have a few spare tyres lying around and one that would fit Finns wheel.
Back in Acharistskale three hours after leaving and arriving at the bus station Finn is nowhere to be seen. His bike and all the stuff is still here so I guess he’s just gone to the shop. Suddenly I see Finn running up the street. 

“Hugo I’m in some old dudes house and his wife is serving us lunch come on. Quick., it’s on the table.”

This is how we ended up in Nodzari and Lilyannas lovely warm house. Nodzari and started talking to Finn while he was waiting at the bus station, he had a bit of English. He invited Finn back to his house and now his wife, Lillyanna was serving us a very welcome bowl of meatball and potato stew with thick crusty bread. Eating this in their big main room next to the crackling metal stove after three hours riding in the rain was too perfect.
At one point during the meal Nodzari disappeared jnto another room and emerged with a bottle of Russian vodka. The rest of the lunch was punctuated by Nodzari filling our glasses, proposing a toast and then Lilyanna scolding him after we finished our drink. This continued until the bottle ran out when Nodzari then held up the empty bottle, shook it and declared “vodka problem”.

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with Noldzari and Lilyanna, lovely people


After lunch we sat around and talked, as much as we could with the two of them. They were grandparents, their children lived in Batumi and another nearby town. Nodzari used to be a police man and border guard at the Turkish border. They both seemed really excited about a computer they had in the corner of the room and kept asking us to “internet Irlanda”.

Lilyanna then offered us a bed for the night in the house. It had gotten pretty late so we weren’t realistically going to make any significant distance. Also the weather outside had gotten increasingly worse. So we graciously accepted.

We spent the evening in their warm room, watching dubbed Indian soap opera on TV. Until a storm blew in and knocked out the power. One of their grandkids paid a flying visit and after w head tea and then went to bed quite early, they both seemed tired and we didn’t want to keep them up. Outside the rain was lashing and the wind was howling, a real storm had whipped up. We were pretty grateful to not be out in it.

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Dublin to Nepal, Georgia, On Tour

Day 75: Batumi to Acharistskale 

We wasted no time getting ready to leave, but it still took the better part of the morning and afternoon to leave Batumi. We had marked out a route that would take us to Tbilisi via some mountains in the south of Georgia. We knew we were probably going to have to wait around a bit again in Tbilisi while getting our Iranian visas so we didn’t mind taking a long route to get there if the route was nice, and we figured some mountain riding almost always provides a good ride.
The road out of Tbilisi started out long and flat, lined with Eucalyptus tress and petrol stations, small markets and tyre repair stations. It then picked up the course of a river and started up into the mountains (though not at a very steep gradient). The sky was darkening with clouds and we were pretty sure it would rain in the near future.

  
  
It was getting darker earlier and when, at about 4:39 we passed a good grassy camping spot at a wide meander in a river we decided to call it a day and set up. It wasn’t a moment too soon, almost right as we started putting the tarp up the rain started to fall. We got the tarp up quickly and took shelter underneath for the rest of the evening before eventually heading off to sleep. It was s short first day back, but cycling out of a city tends to be a bit shorter than a normal day anyway.

 

   

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Dublin to Nepal, Georgia

Batumi

I spent quite a bit of time in Batumi. Finn went back to Ireland to get out Pakistan visa and to go to his college graduation so the bike tour was put on hold for a while. I enjoyed having a decent break anyway, during the last few days in Turkey we had both been feeling tired so a decent rest from cycling was long overdue. 
  
Batumi is an interesting place, it’s right by the Black Sea and a really nice promenade extends around a headland filled with new skyscrapers going up, along a stoney breach for maybe 5km. From the seaside inland the city is nice, orderly and clean from three blocks until you cross the main road of the city and get into ‘real’ Georgia, where everything is ten times as busy, hectic and noisy. The old town where most of the hostels are found is funny, it’s all cobblestones and old European architecture, but I’m pretty sure it was all put in recently as a ploy for tourists to have somewhere nice to walk around.

 

Batumi promenade

 
During the stay in Batumi I ran into a bunch of other cycle tourers who had either just come the way we had, or from the way were planning to go. First was an American guy named Dan who had been a rock climber when he was younger and had gotten into bike touring later in life when his son invited him on a tour of SE Asia. Dan had just done a small cycle from Ankara to Batumi while over from the USA on a business trip.

 

the start of Batumi’s new ‘old’ town

 
Next was Grum from New Zealand who was cycling around the world in 900 days. He had originally planned 5 years, but his wife was having none of that, so 900 days was what he had worked out. When I met him he was into month 17 of the trip and had come via Nepal and Iran and he passed on some great info about cycling in those counties. You can check out his website 

 

old and new accommodation in Batumi

 
There was also Gerrard, a retiree from the UK who had been all over the world before it seemed, and was still trucking(peddling?). Previous tours had taken him through Asia and also Syria and Egypt, a route he wanted to repeat this time but had to change direction given the current climate. He was trying to get an Iranian visa in Batumi, having heard (I’m not sure from where) that it was possible to get one here without the usual bureaucratically hullabaloo needed. I’m not sure if his hearsay panned out as we left before he managed to get his visa.

 

found the Golden fleece

 
There was also a Canadian backpacker called Adam who had been in the go seven months and getting a bit bored of the backpacking lifestyle. After sitting around and listening to us all go on about how fantastic travelling by bike is, he struck a deal with Dan to buy his bike when Dan finished his tour at Odessa, Ukraine and start his own tour from there. I thought it was very cool to jump in just like that, no experience of it before. 

 

this funky building is also a McDonalds

 
Finn returned after a week back in Ireland with Pakistan visas in hand and a whole lot of winter gear we had ordered before he left. Having the visas done is a real bonus, Pakistan is a notoriously difficult country to get a visa for on the road (they seem to only issues tourist visas in country of residence). A big goal of the trip is to go cycling along the Karakoram Highway between Pakistan and China and having one of the two permits required to get on the highway at the start of is next leg was a great lift.
The time off in Batumi was munch appreciate but I was ready to get going again once Finn got back. 

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Dublin to Nepal, Georgia, On Tour, Turkey

Day 74: Camlihemsin to Batumi (into Georgia)

The rain continued overnight and into the morning. Looking at at the map and the distance we had to cover in the time available to us we realised that after yesterday’s little palaver we couldn’t go through the mountains anymore. We needed to get to Batumi, Georgia in time for Finn to catch his flight back home. But we were still stuck up in the foothills with a flat tyre and no spare tubes and all our patches used up.
What we decided to do was to split up. We had to get back down to the coast road so Finn tried to get a lift from one of the many pickups passing by and once he had found a lift I would cycle on. Less than ten minutes later Finn had found himself a lift, threw his bike and bags in the back and I started back down the way we came yesterday.

 

goodbye Finn

 
It was overcast and the rain would occasionally drizzle down, but on the whole it wasn’t all that wet compared to yesterday. I rode along the good old Black Sea highway, at one point catching up to Finn as he waited for another lift. The highway was the same as the previous day’s ride, although this time there was a lot more tunnels. 
I knew I was getting to the border when the back up of trucks started. This wasn’t half as long as the tailback of trucks before the the Turkish border but it did stretch through some tunnels which made for a tight squeeze. Arriving at the border was a bit confusing. There wasn’t any good signage and it was so busy with people and traffic I could make out the way into Georgia! I just wanted to get out of Turkey and couldn’t find the exit!

 

tunnels before the border

 
When I did find the border control the guard on the Turkish side gave me a bit of a hard time leaving until I pulled up my visa, but once at the Georgian border everything was much friendlier. 

“Is that Russian bike?” One of the border guards asked.

“No, it’s American”

“You should get Russian bike, very good. Very fast. Enjoy Georgia.”
And that was it, after over a month in Turkey we had made it to the other side and into a new country! And not long after getting to the other side I passed Finn, wheeling his bike along the side of the road. He had passed me out somewhere and had made it across the border too. We figured we were close enough to Batumi now, I would ride ahead and find somewhere to stay and wait for Finn. As it turns out Batumi is quite a confusing place to get navigate, very few road signs and a lot of high rise buildings that you would assume would lead you to the city center but they are mostly unfinished. 

 

Welcome to Batumi

 
It also was a bit further to the city than we anticipated. 15km from the border all together but with the confusing city to navigate it wasn’t until late, about eight, that Finn finally arrived. But we found a place to stay that nice and had a really warm shower, a godsend after the last few days of rain. We really excited to be done riding over Turkey and finally in a new country. 

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Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Day 73: Ardesen to Camlihemsin

It started raining last night as we slept. When we woke up it was still coming down and despite our hopes that it would clear up with we waited it out it in the morning it continued all day. Finn also woke up to a flat which is never a great feeling but despite it all we were excited today, we were getting off the coast road and up into the mountains. Not only that by we would be crossing the highest pass of our trip, up 3000m from sea level today!
We got going late in the morning, we waited as long as we could but the rain did not let up. As soon as the road turned off into the mountains though it was clear that this was the right decision. Even though most of the higher peaks were obscured by clouds the scenery we could see was fantastic,: really tall, steep slopes with terraces of tea clinging to the sides all the way up the gorge and houses placed on the sides of the hills that looked like they might fall into the last flowing river below at any moment. In fact the rain almost added to the whole experience, as I’m sure this what the weather is like most of the time.

 

first look at the foothills of the Kasçar

  

there we loads of rafting places by the river

 While climbing up this gorge Finn unluckily got another flat. Figuring that there was a piece of cable or something else equally small and invisible caught in the tyre somewhere we swapped it out for my old tyre I was still carrying and put in the last patched tube we had between us. It was so wet and not warm (it wasn’t exactly cold) that the patches wouldn’t vulcanise properly to the tube. Pushing on to the village of Camlihemsin, the last stop before the pass we had to cross, and we realised my old tyre was worse off than we thought as Finn got yet another flat.

   

houses on the steep slopes

 
Pulling into Camlihemsin as bit disheartened we looked around for a bike shop but this was more mountain outpost than tourist village so that was a no go. Retreating into a cafe to assess our options we realised we probably wouldn’t be able to cross the pass today. We had lost too much time waiting out the rain in the morning and the flat tyres had eaten more time than we thought. It was getting late and we didn’t want to attempt the pass in the dying light of a rainy day. 

 

these winches are used to send goods up the hillsides to some of the more remote houses

 
We retreated back down the gorge a couple of kilometre, Finn pumping his tyre every few minutes, back to some gazebos by the road we had passed on the way that we figured would give us some shelter from the incessant rain.
Even though we had only made it less than 40km today, it was still more interesting than most of our days riding the Black Sea coast, and on that account we figured the day was a success. That and there was a little roadside mosque next to the gazebos that I couldn’t fit in but Finn could lay down comfortably in to get out of the rain.

some welcome shelter next to the road. this is where we camped that night

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Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Day 72: Trabzon to Ardesen

This post is going to be a bit short. The road between Trabzon and Ardesen didn’t really provide any interesting riding or views. In a way it was good as we were a bit pressed for time and needed to cover ground quickly.
We left Trabzon early, compared to how long it normally takes us to get out of a city. The weather was very humid and the clouds gathering overhead didn’t bode well. This was another pretty uninteresting day of riding, but it was ok. By the end of today if we reached Ardesen we would be ready to turn off the dull coast road and turn up into the Kaçkar mountains for the last few days before we got into Georgia where the riding should be more interesting.

 

the only photo I took today, you can see what I mean we were so far over on the road that it often didnt feel like riding by the sea at all

 
We had lunch in Rize (a big plate of sardines) and waited out the rain that had started to come down heavily. Once it cleared we got back on the road and rode out to Ardesen where we found a gas station to camp at.

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Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Day 71: Kesap to Trabzon

Another relatively uneventful ride today. The weather was overcast but the wind behind us. We pounded out the kilometres, this evening we wanted to be in Trabzon where we had found a Couchsurfer to host us. Trabzon was 130km away which would normally be a sizeable ride but on the straight and flat with a tailwind it went by pretty fast.
We had lunch in a cafe at a town called Akçaabat where we were joined by a curious local kid for a while who was full of questions that we didn’t understand but answered to his satisfaction, as far as I could tell.

 

Finn teaching the kid some of the finer points of photography

 
We got into Trabzon just as it was getting dark. Trabzon is a sizeable city on the coast with a big university that gives the place a youthful energy. Right off the coast the land rises quickly so the whole city is built on a pretty severe slope. We found a spot with wifi so we could contact our host,and after waiting a while he got back to us and we rode off to his place.
We were staying with Ömer, an enthusiastic guy from the city of Adana (same city that Ozgur, our host in Istanbul was from). He was probably one of the most talkative guys I’ve met. He always had story to tell. We arrived late that night. Next day we went to look around Trabzon during the day with Ömer. There was an election coming up in Turkey in a couple of weeks and Trabzon was decked out with posters, flags and all sorts of campaigners. We wandered for a bit, went down to the coast for tea and then in the evening joined Ömer for the English lesson he was giving a local kid so he could hear some native English. 

 

Outside the Trabzon Aya Sofia with Ömer

  
 According to Ömer the apartment he was renting was built for some Arabs as a holiday time share kind of thing. It worked out then that he had a whole spare bedroom with two beds, which was great as we were both feeling a bit run down but two nights in a nice bed sorted that all out.

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Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Day 70: Ordu to Kesap

After saying goodbye to Ali in the morning and then a quick swim in the Black Sea we left Ordu in the early afternoon. This is going to be quite a short post. All day we were riding along the highway, and nothing of note really happened. 

getting ready for a swim before leaving Ordu. the water in the black sea is not very salty, its a bit like swimming in a lake

 
The traffic was moderate, the weather was fine but overall the ride was nothing that special, that is kind of trade off with cycling on the highway, you tend to make great time as the road is straight and direct with gently incline most of the time but it’s often not all that interesting.

 

one of the more enjoyable stretches of road along the Black Sea highway

 
We had made a plan to leave the coast road a bit before the Georgian border and ride around in the Kaçkar mountains for a day or two. By we were on a tight schedule and still had to actually reach the mountains so we were happy, in a way, to be riding on roads that gave us the chance to cover a lot of ground without too much effort.
So we rode along the Black Sea highway, though not getting to see a whole lot of the coast. The early afternoon turned into the evening and we tried to find somewhere to camp. After two failed stops, one at a park that was too close to the road and another a petrol station that didn’t want us camping there we found a trip of beach. It was secluded from the road and some abandoned changing rooms and beach huts provided a concrete platform to sleep on so we didn’t track sand all over our gear. We finished up the day with another dip in the sea.

 

sunset over the black sea

  

beach camping, we arrived in the dark. it looked nicer then.

 

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Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Day 69: Yaniköy to Ordu

Today we didn’t have so far to ride, we were going to Ordu which was on the other side of the headland we were riding around. Zafir from Samsun had a friend in Ordu who he had told about our trip. This friend, whose name was Ali, had wanted to support our trip to and offered us a place to sleep in his city. It was on our way and we wouldn’t want to turn down hospitality like that.
The riding today was really nice compared to the somewhat dull riding yesterday. Really enjoyable winding up and down into the various little bays and inlets that the road followed. At the apex of the headland was Cape Jason. This particular cape is apparently mentioned in the tale of Jason and the Argonauts who sailed from modern day Thessaly in Greece up,through the Bosphorous and along the Black Sea to retrieve the Fleece from Colchis, modern day Georgia. At this cape the Greek population had built a temple of Jason which was replaced by a church, restored recently to attract visitors.

 

Cape Jason lighthouse

 
 

Cape Jason church

 
From the Cape to Ordu was a little less than 40km. We stopped briefly in the sparkling seaside town of Presembe so we could find some wifi to let Ali know we would be in town soon. It was the a flat and pleasant ride into Ordu.

 

at Ordu, looking back at the headland we had just cycled around

 
We met up with Ali, a friendly family man in his forties who also liked motorcycles. Ali had the rather lucrative job of being the only hazelnut broker in all of Ordu, and with Turkey producing 70% of the worlds hazelnuts and Ordu producing 50% of those you can probably imagine just how lucrative this venture was.
We had expected to be sleeping on Alis couch, but he brought us to a hotel with whose owners he was good friends and put us up there. Again, such generosity! We had dinner with Ali and then he had to head back to the office for a bit but he returned for a couple of drinks in the evening and we had a great time talking to him about Ordu, Turkey and his travels and work. He was really enthusiastic about our trip and as we thanked him for the lovely time we had in Ordu he told us he was just happy to help. 

 

Ali on the left and the hotel owner on the right

 
We slept soundly in the hotel that night. 

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